The claim by Eric Holder that it was right to keep the FBI investigation of General Petraeus secret from the White House, along with Jay Carney’s claim that the White House was not informed of the investigation of the General Petraeus affair until after the election because of “FBI protocols,” doesn’t hold water. Sources are claiming in news reports that “it is long-standing FBI policy for the FBI not to brief Congress or the White House in the middle of a criminal probe that does not involve a security threat.” Holder now says that “we do not share outside the Justice Department, outside the FBI, the facts of ongoing investigations.”

But those claims by Holder and Carney are demonstrably false.

The Petraeus affair did involve a security threat, although it started out as an investigation of anonymous emails sent to Jill Kelley by Paula Broadwell, who the FBI quickly identified as Petraeus’s mistress. By having an affair with Ms. Broadwell, the head of the CIA risked being blackmailed, and his poor judgment and use of personal emails raised the possibility that he was improperly disclosing classified information to her. In fact, reports indicate that the FBI found classified information when it searched the computer of his mistress, although she claims she didn’t get it from Petraeus. She also apparently bragged about having access to classified information while researching her book about Petraeus’s work in Afghanistan.

Obviously, such an FBI protocol against disclosing criminal investigations to the White House except for those involving security concerns would not apply to this investigation. The possible security risk was posed by a senior government official who was directly briefing the president on matters of national security.

Furthermore, Attorney General Eric Holder was informed of this FBI investigation in late summer. The FBI is part of the Justice Department, not the other way around. No such FBI protocol that may apply to FBI agents or to the head of the FBI would apply to the attorney general or limit his ability to brief the president.

It is true that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued guidance to the Justice Department on December 19, 2007, limiting DOJ contacts with the White House regarding ongoing criminal or civil investigations. But that guidance provided that the attorney general or the deputy attorney general could communicate with the White House counsel or his deputy “where it is important for the performance of the president’s duties and where appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.” Further, national security investigations were not subject to the limitations, so long as the attorney general or his two senior aides were notified about the communications with the White House by other DOJ personnel.

Obviously, the president relies on the CIA director for security assessments and briefings on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Can the attorney general and the White House seriously argue that the fact that Petraeus had an extramarital affair that made him subject to blackmail, and that he might have disclosed classified information to his paramour, was not important for the president to know when carrying out his duties to protect the country from national security threats as commander-in-chief?

One of the reasons for the FBI protocols and the DOJ guidance is preventing interference with criminal investigations of third parties who may have political connections with the White House or Congress. That rationale does not apply to the investigation of a high-level government official who is a direct subordinate of the president. Both the president and the National Security Council should have been immediately informed about this investigation when the security issues arose.

In fact, a long-time acquaintance who worked in the Office of the Attorney General in a prior administration told me it was inconceivable that an attorney general would not inform the White House counsel or the president that the president’s CIA director was being investigated.

It certainly was convenient for the president’s reelection campaign that information about this probe, on top of the Benghazi fiasco, did not come out as an October surprise just before the election given that members of his administration have known about it for months. But those who worry about our national security and the many threats we face around the world, including an ongoing war with terrorists who want to destroy us, should be very concerned about an attorney general and an FBI director who did not immediately inform the president that his chief intelligence officer was under investigation. Or about a president who shows no concern about the failure of his two chief law enforcement subordinates to inform him of this problem.

David Truman is the pseudonym of a former Justice Department official.

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1.
Bulgaricus

All I can say about Holder, the Dept. of Justice (now THAT is a contradiction in terms!!!) & the rest of the O administration on this one is liar liar pants on fire!

Just perhaps, the criminal duo will have to hold a pow-pow on their lengthy rap sheets on national tv, and then maybe they will be dragged into handcuffs by the people’s court. Until then, the jury is out!!

It’s nearly inconceivable that Holder would not have been notified and in return that Holder would not have notified the President.

In addition, the DNI position and office was created after 9/11/01 with the mission that all intelligence would flow through the DNI so that “dots could be connected”. But according to administration stories, the DNI was not informed about the FBI investigation or the security problems in Benghazi.

The only conclusions available are incompetence or cover-up. It must be one or the other. Either way the administration stories are facially untrue.

Agree with you except for the “nearly inconceivable” bit. It’s *totally* inconceivable. We’re talking about DC – people don’t do ANYTHING the slightest bit unusual without permission from management. There is no way they’re going to investigate the director of CIA without WH approval. Absolutely none.

I have an idea that sometime last summer someone highly placed in the White House put out the word that if anyone had anything brewing that might prove embarrassing to Obama, they were to keep a lid on it until after the election and, in particular, not to tell the president. Just an idea, but I can quite imagine Valerie Jarrett doing such a thing, can’t you?

Well, according to Holder, even though classified information was discovered on Broadwell’s computer, the consensus at Justice was that Petraeus had not supplied that information, there had been no threat to national security and therefore no need to apprise the president. And certainly no need for the CIA Director to resign his position (which, by the way, is highly presumptuous of the Attorney General as such decisions are above his pay grade). But then two days after the president was safely re-elected, there obviously was a need for the Director to resign, a move that no one can reasonably believe he made voluntarily. So, yeah, just like we should have known what went down in Benghazi and why before the election, we also should have known about national security matters weighty enough to force Petraeus’ resignation. Why, don’t you think we’re entitled to this kind of information when we’re making decisions of this magnitude?

You know, it’s puzzling that Holder appears rarely to know what’s going on within his department (Fast and Furious) and when he does (Petreaus), he doesn’t think the President needs to know. While I’m sure Obama wouldn’t listen in the briefing anyway (or would have cancelled it to go golfing), I’d think that an affair involving the CIA Director that the CIA Director’s wife has not already approved in advance would be acknowledged as a security risk.

We need to give up on the idea that we can defeat Obama and the dems by way of this or that scandal. Even if there IS a scandal, the outrage will all be our own. The left doesn’t care. They. Don’t. Care.

You get it, but nobody else here seems to. Obama could hold a press conference and say:

“Yeah I lied to get re-elected. It worked suckers. I watched them die on camera, denied them help, then went to bed for my fundraiser. I slept soundly because getting me re-elected was way more important for this country than a few bumps in the road. You mad bro?”

and his supporters on the street, in the media, and in congress would clap and cheer wildly. The scandals already verifiable about Obama would have taken him down, or made him unelectable, were he Republican. The combination of unconditional full media support, the race card, and the insanity of his supporters, gives him a coating that makes teflon look sticky. If he ate a baby on live national television the media would praise him for having the courage to proudly display his african roots. Obama could make a video of him and his buddies raping children in the oval office and post it to YouTube, but the establishment still would not allow him to be impeached and removed. It. Will. Not. Happen.

Secretly the media is probably praying to god that the house Republicans are dumb enough to try impeaching him over Bengazi (or anything else for that matter). That would give them something to distract people from the abysmal failure of his policies. If Obama were smart, some time in his second term when he needs a boost, he’d let just enough leak on Bengazi to get house Republicans to try an impeachment. Then the full fury of his media attack machine could be unleashed. It would be a full on orgy of screaming racism and pointing fingers, and it would work. I just pray the house Republicans are not retarded enough to fall for it.

I hate to be a downer here but I have to say I have no confidence that Holder will be penalized even if it is shown he lied. I also think that if they “cave” to pressure to appoint an independent prosecutor it will only be if they are confident the person is a loyalist. The media was powerful and a critical factor in bringing down Nixon and they will be equally powerful in doing the opposite for Obama.

Right; The prosecutor will have to be someone that they have already planted child porn on his computer, or another dupe with a past history of marital problems that resulted from an affair.

The criminal mischief running through this regime is deeper than the Marianas Trench, and more dense than Iridium.
We’ll have voluntary peace through out the Middle East before we get the truth from these bootlickers.

I don’t really care that the Administration lied about why the consulate was attacked – the will continue to successfully obfuscate until we all get tired of it.

The important questions for me:
Who reduced security prior to 9/11/12 in spite of clearly escalating uncertainty and threats?
Who failed to reinforce security prior to 9/11/12 after requests by our diplomats and diplomatic security staff in spite of well known escalating uncertainty and threats?
Who failed to ACT once the attack began? We should have had troops and armed aircraft orbiting Benghazi within an hour waiting for the CINC to authorize a counter attack.
Who instructed the CIA folks to “stand down?”

Prosecuted for treason in the case of not going to the aid of the consulate and CIA building when Americans were under attack.

If the President told his advisors to “do everything we can to keep to those people safe” and someone chose to ignore those orders they are guilty of insubordination if not treason. Personally I find it hard to believe that any military man would not follow those orders to the fullest if not to excess in protecting those people.

The alternative scenario is that the President failed to issue that order and either did nothing and someone else ordered those CIA people to Stand Down (again doubtful someone would do that on their own), or POTUS issued the stand down order for some political purpose. Treason.

I agree the after the fact coverup is not really important, but it is all connected as to why the security wasn’t increased and (according to some stories) actually reduced in the weeks before the attack. The post attack coverup leads to the pre attack decisions.

Our Ambassador was at a CIA enclave in Benghazi, rather than at our Embassy. Why? Word is coming out that he was involved in arranging the transfer of weapons to the Syrian rebels, who included the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Queda fighters, among others. Is our President arming our enemies? And how did the very effective attackers at Benghazi know our Ambassador was going to be there, let alone identify him as someone (the only person) who deserved to be tortured and raped? The cover-up is massive, but will never be resolved, after Obama’s re-election. The Patreaus side show is nothing but a distraction.

Since you did ask, derf, I’ll bet a million billion trillion quadrillion gadzillion bucks the former main stream “news” media will do their worst to let President You Didn’t Build That and his minions get away with it. (I have a hunch the hard part is going to be to find anyone willing to bet more than a cigarette butt against me.)

The administration lies to the country and then laughs in it’s collective face. They hate our guts and would not lift a finger to save our citizens and/or military who are serving overseas. They are deliberating bankrupting our country and aiding our enemies.

What to do?

The Founders inserted provisions in the Constitution for times like these.

The thrust of the comments on Benghazi and the former CIA director seems to be that if the “truth” had been spoken on Benghazi and the investigation on the former CIA director has become known before November 6, somehow this would have affected the outcome.

I dont know if you and yours are familiar with Obama supporters. I am, because for some years my day job has been teaching. I can assure you not one Obama person I know, from the top income groups to the lowest, cares about Obama spinning, or failing to spin, Benghazi or delaying on the CIA matter.

Further, I have yet a single explanation of what the Administration gained from saying Benghazi was not a terror attack. From what I read, there were two types of people involved in that attack, terrorists and opportunistic Muslims with nothing better to do. I dont know how familiar you are with military and intel ops, but you know there is massive confusion which NEVER ever gets sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction because there are multiple interests and multiple perspectives.

Human beings in crisis situation make vast mistakes. Yet for some reason the media expects everyone to act flawlessly, as if they had all the information before them. You never have more than a small part of the information when you are making the decisions.

Your attorney general (I say yours as I am not a citizen though I live here) is, I am told, particularly prone to bad judgements. Why see a conspiracy when it is likely incompetencer/bad judgement? Similarly, on Benghazi we cannot doubt than the Administration messed up its first reactions to the max. This too, to me, shows incompetence. There was no need to say anything except: “we are investigating and this will take time.” Falling prey to the ten-second news cycle America runs on is not something I would expect from a mature, seasoned administration. Thios does not, however, equate to a conspiracy!

Keep up the good work, and may I add a “Death to America’s enemies!”. Of course, America has gone all limp noodle-ish and has no will to fight its enemies, but at least you are in the forefront! (And no, Mr. Obama is not America’s enemy anymore than Bush 43 was as the democrats believed!)

Everyone assumes that Washington/DOJ=-FBI was informed of ‘threatening e-mails from an anonymous gmail source as they occurred. Why did the ‘whistleblower inform Eric Cantor of Jill Kelley’s predicament and that the FL -FBI/US Attorney’s office had id’ed the source as Paula B. and ran cyberchecks netting CIA Petraeus? But it turns out that the comnplainant Jill K. attended CIA/Petraeus’ daughter’s wedding- lunched 3x at WH-the last time Nov.4,2012. Jill K. herself had ‘gmail’ with ISAF Comm.Allen and the Generals P and A gave sworn affidavits to Jill K/’s sister Natalie in a custody fight. Perhaps NSA ran the gmail accounts -finding out about P and P /A&J and duped the whistleblower into going to EWric Cantor- a Republican who duly contacted FBI.The whole affair is so soap-operash. A.G.Holder is an Obamaman- but surely he would inform his boss of CIA Petraeus .The gmail cyber tryst is averting attention away from Benghazi and who altered ‘talking points’ -dereliction of duty- satellite pictures id’ing the CIA annex/Benghazi first time October 12 or 13,2012 depending which country reported it.

Lies such as these are so demonstrably false on their very face that at first glance they would not seem to even need to be debunked. However, we have a gullible public and a press grasping at any straw it can find to protect the president, so debunk them we must. Thanks for the post.

It would appear that when Cheech and Chong are supposed to know about something, anything, they don’t have a clue. But when something takes place like a shooting in a theatre or an old acquaintance getting arrested, Fidel Obama has an immediate opinion as though he were fully briefed. Seems to me that until someone points out this little irony and calls him on it, it will continue as it seems to be working just fine for them.

Everyone knows, what needs to be done, but nobody wants to do it. If” They will rue the day, that I find out I,v got a terminal illness”. Is your creed, I would like to point out that, Life is a terminal illness and that there Isn,t much time left ,to make a difference. We all have duties to fulfill, in this life, commitments to our family,s, our faiths, our being, What is your Imortol soul worth, would you take a chance on eternal damnation to try to set things wright? I don,t have the answer. I thought maby Patraes would do the wright thing, but he didn’t.my heart is aching,I feel like I have lost my country. I,m running out of faith, maby eternal damnation Isn,t so bad after all.